Instead of Asking AI Companies to ‘SLOW DOWN’ We Should Encourage Them to Move Even Faster
An AI Safe Harbor Provision Would Create Guidelines For Development & Safety Without Premature Regulations
The conversation around Artificial Intelligence has started to take on a binary quality, rather prematurely, as if we were debating the two sides of a coin rather than a more complex shape. “Let builders build as is” vs “Regulate.” Ironically, both positions are outputs of acknowledging the incredible early power and promise of the tipping point we’ve reached, but neither incorporate the ambiguity. Fortunately there’s some case law here which might help, and we only have to go back to earlier Internet days and the concept of safe harbor.
‘Safe harbor’ is a regulatory framework which provides that certain conduct won’t break a rule so long as specific conditions are met. It’s used to provide clarity in an otherwise complex situation, or to provide the benefit of the doubt to a party so long as they abide by generally acceptable reasonable standards. Perhaps the most well-known example in our industry is the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which provided safe harbor to Internet businesses around copyright infringement performed by their end users so long as several preconditions…
